TOMMY HAS PRODUCTION VALUES AND VOLUME TO MAKE YOUR STOMACH VIBRATE

Robert Markus (centre) as Tommy with members of the company in Tommy. Photo by Michael Cooper.

*** (out of 5)

Reviewed by James Karas

As the audience is settling down for the opening of Tommy, there is a blast of music that is so powerful, it shook my stomach. The volume was turned down for some parts of the rock opera but my stomach vibrated for an inordinate amount of time during the performance.

Tommy, of course, is the hugely successful musical by Pete Townshend (music, lyrics and book) and Des McAnuff (book). McAnuff was the Artistic Director of the Stratford Festival and last year his Jesus Christ Superstar was produced there and later taken to Broadway.

The volume at which much of the music and singing is done in Tommy is reminiscent of bars where people are supposed to drink, talk and mingle but the music is so loud I cannot imagine how any communication is possible.

The production values of this staging are substantial.

Tommy has an interesting and fascinating plot, far better than one would expect from a musical. As a child, Tommy witnesses the murder of his mother’s lover by his father. His father was presumed dead in World War II but returned. The boy becomes blind and deaf but reacts and comes to life, in effect, when he starts paying a pinball machine. He becomes nothing less than a heroic Pinball Wizard.

This production gave me the feeling that I was inside a pinball machine. That means that in addition to the often powerful and very loud music there are flashes of light, a dizzying display of colours, changes of scene with incredible speed and an astounding number of theatrical effects.

There is liberal use of projections from airplanes and parachutists at the beginning (Tommy’s father was in the air force) street scenes, interior and exterior scenes throughout. The production is intended to and succeeds in overwhelming the audience with its prodigious onslaught of music, colours, movement, dancing and singing. The audience is barely and rarely given a chance to catch its breath. That is what I mean by production values.

Credit is due to the designers who deserve a bow and mention by name: John Arnone (set), David C. Woolard (costumes), Howell Binkley (lighting), Andrew Keister (sound), Sean Nieuwenhuis (projection). 

Special mention is deserved by Wayne Cilento for his choreography. Here is athletic coordination, synchronized movement and creation of energy that is simply outstanding.

The strong cast which frequently sings at the top of their lungs is headed by Robert Markus as Tommy. He sings and acts well. Kira Guloien  and Jeremy Kushnier are very good as his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Walker, with Steve Ross as his pervert Uncle Ernie. Paul Nolan is outstanding as Cousin Kevin.

The musical has a large cast and its success lies in the production values that I mentioned and not in any single aspect.

I must admit that my appreciation of rock music falls short of being keen and for that reason I have concentrated on the positive aspects of the production. One day I may even come to appreciate really loud music that makes my stomach vibrate.

_____

Tommy by Pete Townshend and Des McAnuff opened on May 30 and will run in repertory until October 19, 2013 at the Avon Theatre, Stratford, Ontario. www.stratfordfestival.ca

OUR BETTERS COULD NOT BE BETTER AS A COMEDY AT SHAW FESTIVAL

Reviewed by James Karas

Shaw Festival, thank you for Our Betters.

Our Betters is a play by Somerset Maugham that is now playing at the Royal George Theatre in Niagara-on-the-Lake. It has never been produced at the Shaw Festival and I dare say most of us have never heard of, let alone have seen, this pleasant comedy.

Maugham wrote Our Betters in 1915 and took up the then familiar topic of rich American heiresses marrying titled but financially strapped Englishmen. “You give me a coronet and I will bring over a few million dollars” was the bargain. No love or attraction or any other boring middle class sentiments required.  

American Pearl Saunders (Claire Jullien) married an English baronet and became Lady Grayston of Grosvenor Square, Mayfair. Read: posh. Her sister Bessie (Julia Course) has arrived from America and Pearl has set the wheels in motion to find her a poor peer to marry.

Pearl is just one of a group of loaded Yanks who married pauper peers. Minnie (Laurie Paton) became the Duchesse de Surennes and Flora (Catherine McGregor) rose to Princess della Cercola.

Pearl has become a force in English society and is a serial adulteress, in fact, a slut. She offers her body for sex and money. Minnie has money therefore she can afford to buy sex and she finances a gigolo.

The play does have a centre of morality represented by Bessie, her American friend Fleming (Wade Bogert-O’Brien) and Flora who has come to terms with what she did and what she has become.

The rather straightforward and predictable plot has many pleasures. Jullien is the perfect society woman; a smart and manipulative trend-setter who uses men as if they are mere toys. She is counter-balanced by Course’s well-done Bessie: a decent woman who almost falls into the same trap as Lady Grayston.

Paton gives us a pathetic cougar as the aging Duchesse who has nothing but money and sexual desire left. McGregor is excellent as the smart and perceptive Princess and Lorne Kennedy is perfect as the rich, pretentious and not-too-bright Fenwick, mere putty in the hands of Pearl who milks him for his money.

Many Canadian actors have considerable difficulty affecting that cut-diamond, upper crust English accent. In Our Betters the problem is partially solved because we have Americans trying to do an English accent. They do it indifferently but that is precisely what we expect of them. There is a problem with the characters who are in fact English and Canadian actors must struggle to deliver the chiseled goods.

Both Charles Gallant as the gigolo Tony and Ben Sanders as Lord Bleane, the man who wants to marry Bessie, have that problem.  This becomes more pronounced because Neil Barclay as the super-sized American Thornton Clay pretends to be a perfect Englishman. He is just a boorish American, of course, and his accent is perfect and his performance very good.

The play is set in a drawing room in Mayfair and the morning room in the country (if you are rich you can afford rooms for different times of the day!). Set Designer Ken MacDonald does a splendid job. The Mayfair set is all beige and most of the costumes are of similar hue. This creates a rarefied and unreal world of elegance. The morning room with its patterned wall-paper and leather couches strikes a different note of opulence that is so rich and so country. Flick your wrist, please.

Morris Panych directs with panache. The timing, the pace, the humour are all worked superbly. They do not make social circles or plays like the world of Our Betters but it is a sheer pleasure to visit both for a couple of hours in Niagara-on-the-Lake for a wonderful night (or afternoon) at the theatre.    

_____

Our Betters  by W. Somerset Maugham will run in repertory until October 27, 2013 at the Royal George Theatre, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario. www.shawfest.com.

EXCEPTIONAL ROMEO AND JULIET OPENS STRATFORD FESTIVAL 2013

 

Sara Topham (left) as Juliet and Daniel Briere as Romeo with members of the company in Romeo and Juliet. Photo by David Hou.

Reviewed by James Karas

With bagpipes piping, drummers drumming, limousines disgorging beautiful people and hoi polloi emitting gasps of admiration (okay, there were bagpipes and taxis), the Stratford Festival opened this year’s season with an excellent production of Romeo and Juliet.

Much of the credit goes to Director Tim Carroll who has brought the “original practices” approach pioneered at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London to the Stratford Festival. Without getting into much detail, the productions are an imaginative leap into how plays may have been done in the 16^th century. They are done on an empty stage, emphasize the text and are usually boisterous and thoroughly enjoyable. There is no attempt at “authenticity” because Juliet would have to be played by a boy, just to give one example.

That is a fair description of this production of Romeo and Juliet. Carroll makes judicious and hilarious use of the audience. You have flowers in your hands? Get a member of the audience to smell them. You have a list of names that you cannot read? Show it to someone in the front row. You want to describe a beautiful woman? Point to someone in the fifth row. The method makes the audience a part of the action and provides gales of laughter.

Carroll does not hesitate to add dance sequences, one of which is particularly appropriate and effective. When Paris (Antoine Yared) arrives at the Capulet house on his wedding day to marry Juliet, he and his companions kick their heels into a lively dance. He quickly realizes that Juliet is “dead” and the gaiety stops abruptly as her father (Scott Wentworth) bursts in tears.
 

The acting, as can be expected in a play with a large cast, is uneven with the good outweighing the merely serviceable. The best is Sara Topham as Juliet. She is young, petite, agile and can leap onto her bed like the teenager that she is supposed to be. Better still, she exudes innocence and youthful passion. Best of all, she has poetry in her voice. Topham understands and delivers Shakespeare’s gorgeous language with nice vocal inflections and modulations. A delight.

The prose is assigned to the lower classes and the best of them is Kate Hennig as the rough-and-ready Nurse. Hennig’s Nurse is the quintessential servant: loyal, cunning, smart and tough. She has no poetry but she is real and splendid.

Stratford veteran Wentworth can always be relied to provide a strong performance, in this case as the patriarchal Capulet. He is both dictatorial and emotionally moving.

Shakespeare gave Mercutio the great Queen Mab speech and Jonathan Goad delivers it fairly straight-forwardly. There are many ways of doing it but Carroll seems to have chosen poetry over histrionics and so much the better.

Tom McCamus gave a first-rate performance as Friar Laurence. This friar is world-wise without being world-weary and holy without being sanctimonious. Terrific.

Daniel Briere made a good-looking Romeo with youth and fervor on his side. Unfortunately he lacked poetry. He has some the most beautiful iambic pentameters ever penned but he managed to deliver only prose. We want to hear the vocal modulation at every syllable and feel that we are listening to verbal music. We did not.

In the final scene, things got even worse but this time it was not entirely Briere’s fault. When Romeo finds Juliet “dead” in the mausoleum, he notices that she is still beautiful and that “death's pale flag is not advanced” upon her lips and cheeks. It is an extraordinarily beautiful speech of love and grief. Briere delivers part of the speech while looking perfunctorily at Juliet and then he jumps on top of the bier on which she is lying. A scene of pathos and majestic grief becomes something from The Three Musketeers. Too bad.

The sum total, however, is a highly enjoyable production and all one can do is repeat Oliver Twist’s plea for “more, please”.

For those interested in trivia, when the Festival opened in 1953, it was called the Stratford Shakespearean Festival. Shakespeare’s name, however, was dropped in 1956. When Antoni Cimolino and Des McAnuff took over as General and Artistic Directors, respectively in 2008 they amended the marquee to read Stratford Shakespeare Festival. Their first production was a lackluster Romeo and Juliet directed by McAnuff. 

With Cimolino as Artistic Director this year, we are back to Stratford Festival sans Shakespeare but with a splendid production of Romeo and Juliet. Perhaps we should listen to Juliet when she asks “What's in a name?” and reply “a good production will be just as good no matter what the Festival is called.”

         
______

Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare opened on May 27 and will run in repertory until October 19, 2013 at the Festival Theatre, Stratford, Ontario.www.stratfordfestival.ca

 

MAJOR BARBARA – THE SHAW FESTIVAL’S ONLY PLAY BY SHAW DONE WELL

Reviewed by James Karas

The share price of George Bernard Shaw who has a festival that bears his name in Niagara-on the-Lake seems to have plummeted. In the beginning (1962), there was nothing but Shaw at the Shaw Festival. In 1965, Sean O’Casey squeezed in with one play and in 1967, Somerset Maugham sneaked in one of his works. In 2013, poor Shaw gets a mere one and a half of his plays produced. Major Barbara is the one and an adaptation of his Geneva by John Murrell as Peace In Our Time is the half. In other words, Shaw went from 100% to 15% of the take. Now you know how the shareholders of Research in Motion must feel.

The good news is that the production of Major Barbara directed by Jackie Maxwell, the Festival’s Artistic Director, is excellent.

Much credit goes to Nicole Underhay in the title role. Barbara is a major in the Salvation Army in early twentieth century London and she is passionate about saving people’s souls. Most people need nourishment for their stomach and she therefore has an uphill battle. She is also the daughter of a wealthy gun and powder maker or the business of weapons for killing people and not saving souls. Underhay gives us a Barbara who is attractive, spunky, committed and intelligent.

Her father, Andrew Undershaft (Benedict Campbell), is a powerful, seemingly unscrupulous capitalist who is interested in profit and has no qualms about manufacturing weapons of destruction. There is more to him than that, of course, and that is the whole point of the play. Campbell is excellent in the role; he can bluster, be dramatic and witty and deliver a fine performance. Shaw cannot turn off his verbosity in the final act and we are grateful for Campbell’s performance that carries the play to its conclusion.

The other central role in the play is that of Adolphus Cusins, a professor of Greek who falls in love with Barbara and in the end turns out to be Undershaft’s spiritual son. A red-haired Graeme Somerville as Cusins grows from an infatuated lover to a future industrialist and humanitarian in a fine performance.

The play moves from the library of Lady Britomart (Laurie Paton) where the upper crust Undershaft family gathers and we get good performances but bad accents from Ben Sanders, Wade Bogert-O’Brien and Ijeoma Emesowum. From there we go to the Salvation Army shelter where we get cockney accents and hungry looks.

We meet Peter Krantz, Billy Lake and Catherine McGregor as the down-and-outs who do very good work with much better lower class accents.

Maxwell gets high marks for her directing subject to a couple of comments. The play opens in the Undershaft library but Maxwell has decided to interpolate a short scene with Barbara. It may appear suitable but we do not need anyone to tamper with the play. What is the point?

Judith Bowden’s design merits comment. The shelter where the play opens in Maxwell’s tampered version of the play consists of a bare brick wall, an iron staircase and some exposed concrete. No complaints about it. Then we need to switch quickly to the Undershaft library and we have several gray panels lowered that are supposed to represent books. The exposed brick walls remain as well as some of the railings. This is just plain ugly.

The set for the scene at the Undershaft factory is a variation on the above and it is acceptable.

Major Barbara has a lot of words and you need actors who can deliver them properly over the almost three hours that the performance lasts. This production succeeds in that regard and provides a good night at the theatre.  

 _____

Major Barbara by Bernard Shaw runs in repertory from May 2 until October 19, 2013 at the Royal George Theatre, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario. www.shawfest.com.

 

THIS HOUSE - POLITICAL EXTRAVAGANZA FROM NATIONAL THEATRE MAKES DEMOCRACY LOOK BAD

Reviewed by James Karas

This House is a riveting political extravaganza that was shown in movie theaters directly from the Olivier stage of the National Theatre, London. It is about the backroom political warfare of the Conservative and Labour Parties of Great Britain between 1974 and 1979 when Labour fought to survive as a minority government.

The large stage of the Olivier is turned into the House of Commons at Westminster with people from the audience seated on each side of the stage as if they were Members of Parliament. Most of the action however takes place in offices, corridors, the inside of Big Ben and the basement.

Playwright James Graham is not interested in the Prime Ministers or the Leaders of the Opposition Parties of the day. Harold Wilson and later James Callaghan were Prime Ministers during the period and Margaret Thatcher became Conservative Party leader but none of them is mentioned directly.

Graham focuses on the Labour and Conservative “whips”, the party disciplinarians who make sure that their members are in the house when necessary and maintain party loyalty. In a minority government, they woo members of other parties with persuasion, promises, coaxing and whatever other means they can conceive and perpetrate in support of purely political ambitions.

The play moves with ferocious speed at times, has some Wildean wit, considerable drama and comedy, and a satisfactory ending. The bickering, backstabbing and enormous efforts by the Parties to outwit each other, with Labour desperately trying to stay in power and the Conservatives just as desperately trying to defeat them can be quite depressing. Labour realizes that is unable to pass any legislation and the country is paralyzed. What is their achievement? Keeping the Conservatives out is the answer.

There is treachery, stupidity, selfishness, arrogance and complete disregard of the national interest. However, there is also some humanity and Graham does find an act of principled nobility at the end of the play.

The action shifts from the House, to offices, to other locations with lightning rapidity and director Jeremy Herrin reaches frenetic speeds but also slows down for mellow moments.

The action is propelled by the eight whips (five for Labour and three for the Conservatives) who pursue their own members and MPs from the marginal parties. Vincent Franklin is in overdrive as the Labour whip Michael Cocks with Phil Daniels as the less frenetic whip Bob Mellish . Lauren O’Neil as the new and attractive Labour whip who shows class and sense and humanity.

Julian Wadham, Charles Edwards and Ed Hughes as the Conservative whips, represent men from a different class who are no less conniving than their Labour counterparts. The whole play was acted superbly.    

My only complaint is that the play is relentlessly political and has a constant theme of getting one vote more than the other side. There is large number of MPs introduced by the name of their riding and that causes some confusion in people who do not know the political map of Great Britain.

There is a somewhat limited “human side” with the dying MP who is brought in to vote, the nursing mother and the Scottish, Irish and Welsh members who are colourful and make democracy look bad. Mind you, almost all of them make democracy look bad.

The audience in the movie house did not get the full effect of the efficient movement from one venue to the other on the stage. At the back of the stage was the interior of Big Ben but the close-ups made us lose the full effect of that and   of the House of  Commons.

Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister in 1979 and she took over with an iron grip setting aside all the unseemly squabbles. She has left a controversial legacy with many people refusing to forgive her for some of her policies. At the end of this play, her election comes as a relief.

   _____

This House by James Graham was shown at the AMC Yonge and Dundas Theatre, 10 Dundas St. East, Toronto Ontario and other theatres on May 16, 2013. For more information visit http://www.cineplex.com/events/

GUYS AND DOLLS - A PEARL OF A MUSICAL AT SHAW FESTIVAL

Reviewed by James Karas

Guys and Dolls is the Shaw Festival’s big musical offering and it should keep audiences entertained until October. The 1950 show by Frank Loesser, Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows has both the advantage and the disadvantage of familiarity for most theatregoers but that should not detract anything from this production.

Based on a story and characters by Damon Runyon, Guys and Dolls is pure New York – the New York of the underworld where gamblers are looking for a safe place for a crapshoot, the cops want to arrest them and the Salvation Army wants to save their souls. That may seem unreal, and for that reason the musical is properly subtitled a “fable of Broadway.”

The chief gangsters are Nathan Detroit (Shawn Wright) and Sky Masterson (Kyle Blair). Nathan is an inveterate gambler who cannot find a place for his game because the police are after him. Wright does a good job and gets most of his laughs. His New York accent is decent but not perfect (this applies to most of the actors in varying degrees). There is not much demand on his vocal chords and the tough/comic character is what counts Wright delivers him.

Nathan and his doll Miss Adelaide (Jenny L. Wright) provide the comic romance of the plot. The latter has a high-pitched, comic voice and has been engaged to Nathan for 14 years. She tries to reform him as she waits for him to marry her. In the meantime, she is telling her mother that they are married and have four children. A shoe-in role for Wright and she does not miss a beat.

Blair as Sky Masterson is tall, handsome, well-dressed and has a reasonably good voice. Masterson is the man who bets $1000.00 that he can take Sarah Brown, a Salvation Army sergeant, to Cuba for dinner. Elodie Gillett is blonde, pretty and can sing well enough to get Sky to fall in love with her. We want both the comic and serious romances to work.

Guys and Dolls does have one seriously or almost seriously evil person in Big Julie (Aadin Church) who comes from Chicago and pulls out a gun on the other gamblers. Church looks and acts the tough guy but in the end he is not so bad.

Much of the comedy lies in the secondary characters, a bunch of colourful gamblers with names like Nicely-Nicely (Thom Allison), Benny Southstreet (Billy Lake), Rusty Charlie (Kelly Wong) and Harry the Horse (Evan Alexander Smith). They are sinners that are promised to Sarah for her Save-a-Soul Mission. The result is, of course, hilarious.

There are fast ensemble pieces, dance routines and nice melodies. “Adelaide’s Lament,” the familiar “Luck be a Lady” and the more than a dozen other numbers create energy, humour and fulsome entertainment.

Director Tadeusz Bradecki and Choreographer Parker Esse maintain a fine pace and onward momentum. Set Designer Peter Hartwell gives a black-and-white image of Broadway as if we were looking at old photographs of New York.

The company does not have any outstanding singers but the overall production is enjoyable.

_____

Guys and Dolls by Frank Loesser, Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows opened on May 11 and will run in repertory until October 12, 2013 at the Festival Theatre, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario. www.shawfest.com.

 

GIULIO CESARE IN HIGHLY THEATRICAL PRODUCTION LIVE FROM THE MET

Reviewed by James Karas

The Metropolitan Opera wrapped up its seventh season of live broadcasts with an excellent production of Georg Friedrich Handel’s Giulio Cesare.  The David McVicar production was originally seen at the Glyndebourne Festival in 2005.

Cesare has a convoluted and undramatic plot and although the music is quite beautiful, much of it sounds the same and there are numerous repetitions. That places a heavy load on the director to make the almost five hours’ duration an enjoyable experience rather than an endurance test.

McVicar has an interesting conception and a superb execution that make for an extraordinary production. First, he moves the time of the plot from ancient Rome to 19^th century Egypt. The conquerors are not Roman but British and we are put on a more familiar ground of imperialist activity.

We get the familiar insignia of British imperialist occupiers: red coats, white helmets, epaulets on the shoulders and medals on the chest. The locals wear fezes and aprons with a mixture of beautiful dresses and ornate costumes for the upper crust.

McVicar invests the production with sheer theatricality from beginning to end to make the static plot fluid and exciting. He does not shy away from humour, provides plenty of choreography, fight scenes and movement to create a marvelous production.

Set Designer Robert Jones places the action between two rows of columns with a view of the sea at the back. The backdrop is changed frequently to indicate the different settings and the effect is dramatic.   

After the curtain rises and during the overture, we see billowing waves and the arrival of ships. The ships pull into the harbor and Caesar disembarks onto the stage for the opening scene. Intelligent stage design.

Costume Designer Brigitte Reiffenstuel goes to market in her design of clothes. We are told that Cleopatra alone has eight costumes and clearly, no expense was spared in outfitting everybody. Money and design talent talk and the costumes, especially those of the women are gorgeous.

Handel did not skimp in providing the leading roles with lots of notes. Caesar, Cleopatra, Cornelia, Sesto, Tolomeo and Achilla are all given major arias and scenes. Of course, the opera is long enough not to leave anybody out.

Soprano Natalie Dessay gave the best performance in the crowded field. She probably has the best music but she had complete control of the role and not only sang with assurance but danced, romped around the stage and was vocally and physically impressive.

American countertenor David Daniels sang the role of Caesar. Initially he appears in a red coat, epaulets and a brass breastplate as if he wants to emulate a bodybuilder. He gets rid of all that until near the end and concentrates on singing. His phrasing and ornamentations are amazing and his Caesar is splendid within the boundaries of Baroque characterization.

I was most impressed with Irish mezzo-soprano Patricia Bardon as Cornelia, the wife of the murdered Pompey. Dressed in a black gown, the statuesque blonde beauty is a stunning image of the grieving widow. She sang beautifully and gave an emotionally and vocally convincing Cornelia.

Mezzo-soprano Alice Coote was the perfect foil as Cornelia’s son Sesto, the young man who vows vengeance for the murder of his father. A fine performance.

French countertenor Christophe Dumaux sang the creepy Tolomeo who beheaded Pompey, while the lower vocal range of the opera range was occupied by baritone Guido Loconsolo as Achilla, the Egyptian general.    

The success of the production lies obviously in Handel’s beautiful music, which despite its many repetitions in the arias and a pervasive impression of sameness in many places, is quite splendid. Full marks to Conductor Harry Bicket and the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra.

After that, credit goes to the outstanding cast with the three countertenors and a mezzo trouser role that only few opera houses can afford.

But even with all that, the production may have ended up with  some yawn-inducing segments if it were not for McVicar’s sense of physicality and theatricality. For example, both Tolomeo and Achilla lust after Cornelia and they attempt to seduce her. The attempt could be left to the music and the words. Instead, McVicar has her assaulted and almost raped as she is grabbed from behind, thrown to the ground and a hand is put up her dress.

A passing comment on the work of Gary Halvorson, the Director for Cinema. He did his level best to ruin the production. Let us hope that the Met will eventually find a grown-up to do the job instead of a child who thinks these broadcasts are video games.

  ____

Giulio Cesare by Georg Friedrich Handel was shown Live in HD on April 27, 2013 at The Beach Cinemas, 1651 Queen Street East, Toronto, ON, M4L 1G5 and other theatres across Canada. For more information: www.cineplex.com/events